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What\u27s Said in the Booth Never Stays in the Booth: A Comparative Analysis of the Use of Rap Lyrics in American and English Criminal Trials
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Combine Shapelets
Get PDFSensor-based human activity recognition has become an important research field within pervasive and ubiquitous computing. Techniques for recognizing atomic activities such as gestures or actions are mature for now, but complex activity recognition still remains a challenging issue. I was a candidate in an activity classification thesis. It collected 4 activities, which included walking on the sidewalk for a set distance, walking up and down a set of stairs, walking on the treadmill at 2.5 mph for 2 minutes, and jogging on the treadmill at 5.5 mph for 1 minute. It took 30 minutes to collect one candidate data. If complex activity data can be made up with atomic activities data, the data collecting process will be simplified. In this thesis, I used methods to mimic a complex activity shapelet by combing atomic activity shapelets. I first collect two candidates walk, jump and skip time series data, in which walk and jump are considered the atomic activities of skip. Time series patterns, shapelets, are extracted using tsshapelet package. Shapelets are small sub-series, or parts of the time-series, that are informative or discriminative for a certain class. They can be used to transform the time-series to features by calculating the distance for each of the time-series you want to classify to a shapelet. In order to create skip representative shapelet, Barycenter Dynamic Time Warping and Weighted Dynamic Time Warping are used to average walk and jump shapelet, and then compare the euclidean distance between skip shapelet with walk shapelet, jump shapelet and, combined-shapelet. Experimental result show that the combined-shapelet is closer to skip shapelet than single walk or jump shapelet. Then I use three evaluation methods to mathematically and statistically show that combined-shapelet and real skip shapelet are similar. Evaluation methods include sliding window, cycle comparison and random comparison. To verify whether combined-shapelet can substitute real skip shapelet, a new labeled time series data is introduced, the result shows that both shapelets have the label accuracy around 70%, accuracy difference is less than 1%
Elementary Summer School: Culturally Responsive Practices and Academic Outcomes for English Learner Students in Grades 4–6
Get PDFThis mixed-method study explored the culturally responsive practices of a midsized, Southern California school district that used Expanded Learning Opportunities Program (ELOP) state funding to implement a voluntary summer program accessible to TK–6 grade students district-wide. Qualitative data gathered from semistructured interviews with the principal on special assignment (POSA), three upper-grade summer school teachers, and three school outreach liaisons (SOLs) highlighted the culturally responsive practices of the school district to address student and family needs, focusing specifically on English learners (ELs). Quantitative data from the school district examined included the summative test scores for EL students in Grades 4–6. Although EL summer school students did not score significantly higher than EL students who did not attend summer school, the findings demonstrated EL students increased their scaled scores in English language arts (ELA), math, and English Language Proficiency Assessments for California (ELPAC). A promising finding was the significant change in scores from before to after the summer school program for EL students. Although the study demonstrated funding alone did not address educational inequity as seen in test scores, the qualitative data highlighted powerful educational practices to help address the needs of students and families. Thus, the culturally responsive design features and practices of the summer school program are an initial start to supporting EL students and shifting the education system toward equity
Comparing the Social Responses of AIDS and COVID-19 through Oral History
Get PDFIn the past 40 years, the United States has faced 2 major public health crises: the AIDS epidemic, and the global COVID-19 pandemic. In this project I consider the various aspects of these public health emergencies such as sharing the burden of survival, the role of fear, the bastardization of identity politics, and queerness as a political project. I do this by analyzing oral histories and I argue that we can look at the AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic in parallel. During both AIDS and COVID, despite severely lackluster governmental responses, we saw overwhelming amounts of community organizing and collective action on the part of the public. Why do public health crises, such as the HIV/AIDS epidemic and the COVID-19 pandemic push people towards collective social action? I will be drawing on ideas from feminist care ethics, especially ideas of interdependence. ACT UP was given life through the community they created for themselves but a hallmark of COVID-19 was isolation. I will explore how interdependence and community plays out in the context of COVID-19 since we were all alone for so long. Additionally, drawing on ideas about the social contract and Foucault’s ideas about governmentality, what is it about COVID and AIDS in particular, that made people feel so powerless and made our bodies available for governing in ways that they previously had not been? Lastly, I will explore queerness as a political position. Queerness is not about sexuality but rather, relationships to power and the state. Especially regarding COVID, some people just wanted things to go back to “normal” as quick as possible while others saw it as an opportunity to change the social order, and how do these perspectives affect the way people respond to major crises
“I\u27m Not Searching the Right Words”: User Experience Searching Historic Clothing Collection Websites
Get PDFThis study investigates the search processes of users accessing public websites representing historic clothing collections, examining where their searches are supported by the metadata in the collection databases and what factors could make their experience more inclusive. With IRB approval from four universities, we performed a recorded experiment with twenty adults: ten students of historic dress and ten fashion professionals. Four tasks included search scenarios and images representing diverse historic garments. Results indicate that both the descriptive metadata and search features on collection websites present challenges for the typical user search process. Users search for historical dress content the way they perform online shopping, relying on images, lay terms, and user-friendly search filters. Factors that influenced individual users’ experience included technology and ease of guessing, revealing a hesitation around international garments for fear of being culturally offensive if guessing incorrectly. Inconsistency of terminology used by different websites meant that even users who were familiar with professional clothing vocabulary faced challenges. Conclusions indicate a need for enhanced metadata, better use of international nomenclature standards, effective search filters, and basic images in databases. Furthermore, community involvement will improve public search tools and facilitate learning about different cultures
The Impossible Biangle and the Possibility of Geometry
No full textKant repeatedly uses the biangle as an example of an impossible figure. In this paper, I offer an account of these passages and their significance for the possibility of geometry as a science. According to Kant, the constructibility of the biangle would signal the failure of geometry. Whereas Wolff derives the no-biangle proposition from the axiom that between two points there can be only one straight line, Kant gives it axiomatic status as a synthetic a priori principle possessing immediate certainty. Because we are unable to generate a schema for the biangle, the failure of the attempt to construct it is intuitively clear. The parallel between mathematical and empirical concepts is instructive because both involve the synthesis of disparate intuitions into a unity. We do not, strictly speaking, even possess a well-formed concept of the biangle, because its representation cannot fulfill certain basic requirements of concept formation
A Space for Healing: Spiritual Direction with Justice-Minded Evangelicals and Ex-vangelicals
Get PDFUnfortunately, when people hear the term Evangelical, they think of the current caricature of the white Evangelical Christian, standing firmly on the far right of the nation’s political spectrum, representing the 80% of those who voted for Donald Trump, and still defending MAGA and Christian Nationalism. There are many justice-minded Evangelicals, however, who, whether they still utilize the term Evangelical or not, have been struggling to hold onto their faith, as well as discern and act wisely. Many are seeking spaces of soul care, particularly related to questions of faith and justice, and Spiritual Direction serves as an important contemplative space for honest emotions, questions, and discernment. Many of these individuals are Christians of Color whose wisdom and insights have been severely underappreciated or outright rejected. Others are white Christians who face exhaustion as the lonely voices seeking justice in their Christian organizations. The pastoral challenge is that those who seek Spiritual Direction from this socially conscious demographic often show up under high stress and with deep wounds, making it especially complex for the Director to respond carefully and thoughtfully. This pastoral synthesis project examines the historical roots of this problem in Evangelicalism, offers theological foundations for pastoral care, and proposes 9 practices for Spiritual Direction with justice-minded Evangelical and Ex-vangelical Christians. These include: Trust-Building; Breathwork; Therapeutic Support; Narrative Re-Telling; Imaginative Prayer; Discernment; Lament; Claiming Cultural Wisdom; and Recognizing Consolation and Desolation